Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction
“There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.” —Marlon James
Has the hoax now moved from the sideshow to take the center stage of American culture?
The award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon—the legacy of P. T. Barnum’s “humbug” culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump’s “fake news.” Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and “What Is It?,” an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution.
Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and frauds invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from the pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. This brilliant and timely work asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a contagious cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.
Kevin Young is the author of a previous book of nonfiction, The Grey Album, a New York Times Notable Book, and of eleven books of poetry. He is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the poetry editor for The New Yorker.
Table of Contents
Book 1 A History of the Hoax
1 The American Museum: On the madness of crowds
Chapter 1 The Age of Imposture 7
Humbug
P.T. Barnum
Matthias the Prophet
The Moon Hoax
Poe
Tales
Chapter 2 The Freaks of Dame Fortune 27
Joice Heth
The Mummy
The Mammy
What is It?
The Circassian Beauty
Chapter 3 Splitfoot 45
Spiritualism
William H. Mumler
The Fox Sisters
Spirit Photography
Heaven Tourism
The Cottingley Fairy Hoax
Arthur Conan Doyle
Chapter 4 Bearded Ladies 63
The Lincoln Letters
The "Dreadnought" Hoax
George Psalmanazar
Girl Wonders
Opal Whiteley
Joan Lowell
Travel Liars
2 Neverland: On race & other popular delusions
Chapter 5 Cowboys & Aliens 95
Pornographies
Imaginary Indians
Grey Owl
Nasdijj
Chapter 6 Blood Nation 117
Memoir
James Frey
Margaret B. Jones
Little Tree
Captivity
Poetic License
Chapter 7 Lost Boys 139
Faction
Forbidden Love
Three Cups of Tea
Gay Girl in Damascus
Mutant Message Down Under
Chapter 8 The Time Machine 161
Lost Races
Professor Agassiz
Dr. Moreau
Degeneration
Miscegenation
War of the Worlds
Piltdown Man
The Cardiff Giant
The Tasaday
3 Mysteria: A sideshow
Chapter 9 The Heart Is Deceitful 189
JT LeRoy
Lance Armstrong
Laura Albert
Sybil
Anthony Godby Johnson
Hysteria
Chapter 10 Eve Black 211
Eve White
South Virginia
Avatar
Millennialism
Book 2 The Hoaxing of History
4 The Vampire's Mirror: Of imposture, forgery & monsters
Chapter 11 Butterfly Books 233
Frankensteins
Frederic Prokosch
Lily
Thomas Wise
Major Byron
Voices
Chapter 12 Spruce Goose 253
The Hitler Diaries
The Autobiography of Howard Hughes
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Fake!
Elmyr
Chapter 13 Bakelite 271
Han Van Meegeren
The Hitler Diaries
Jerzy Kosinski
Chapter 14 The Vampire's Wife 285
The Painted Bird
Binjamin Wilkomirski
Laura Grabowski
Autofiction
5 Hack Heaven: Of the journalist & the liar
Chapter 15 Glass Ceilings 305
The New Narrative
Ravi Desai
The New Republic
Ern Malley
Ruth Shalit
Stephen Glass
The Journalist & the Murderer
Chapter 16 The Gingerbread Man 327
Taxis & the Meaning of Work
Kae Bang
Chapter 17 In Bad Blood 343
Susan Smith
Brutal Imagination
The Washington Post
Jimmy's World
Ben's World
Volunteer Slavery
Chapter 18 Burning Down 359
The New York Times
Jayson Blair
Michael Finkel
The Truth
6 Unoriginal Sin: On plagiary, murder, bad poetry & other crimes